Back in the game - Fiji to Western Australia

So this is embarrassing we have been neglecting our poor little blog and the one person that reads it, my apologies.

We have much to catch up on, so in a nut shell (more detailed blogs to follow once I've gently persuaded Stuff to contribute, holding surf boards captive may be required for this),

Sailing
We sailed from Fiji to New Zealand, Bay of Islands. We crossed 1,058 nautical miles in 8 days. 
Crewed by,
The two of us: although really we were just cooks, cleaners, watch keepers and sometimes wound something if we were told to 
The skipper Rus: Marine engineer, owner and builder of our vessel, the Antipodean
1st Mate Ron: Retired teacher, full time sailor, has sailed in pretty much every race and rally ever organised and has done as well as has stories about every crossing imaginable. 

It was an awesome experience, one I would highly recommend and we really hope to do more travelling by yacht!!

Bay of Islands
Once we made port and cleared customs and quarantine, Ron very kindly put us up for a few days at his lovely home in the bay of Islands so we could recoup and plan our next stage of the journey. He also was good enough to take us on a bit of a tour of the area and for a day out on his yacht. The Bay of Islands is stunning and I hope I can go back and spend some more time there! I also hope that Ron makes it to the UK one day so we can happily repay the hospitality. From Ron's we arranged a bus to Auckland and a flight to Perth via Sydney

Going down under
We spent a day in Auckland before flying out to Australia, most of this ended up being in a bar watching and betting on the Melbourne cup whilst drinking cocktails followed by eating Indian food in our hotel room.
On course for Perth we were required to spend about 10h in Sydney this was spent eating Thai food, drinking a few beers and having a sleep in a park before heading back to the airport. The airport shuttle train thing is awesome, it takes you out of and back to the airport with next to no fuss. We finally arrived in Perth after a very long day to find Oscar waiting for us. Oscar and Stuff have been friends since uni and have lived together, the two of them plus Theo make a whole. Oscar moved to Australia 2 years ago and we hadn't seen him since then. As is always the way with good friends nothing seemed any different when we did meet up.

Perth
Oscar actually lives near Margaret River 3 hours south of Perth however it happens that he was attending a training course in the city that week so we got accommodation together for a couple of days and then heading home with Oscar come the weekend. Stuff and I spent a day chilling out recovering from the travelling, then the next day we borrowed Oscars car whilst he was at his training course and went for a drive around Rockingham, ate some sushi sat on the beach and generally mooched about until it was time to pick Oscar up and head south to our new temporary home.


Margaret River
We arrived at Oscars just in time to help him move out. He had thankfully sorted out a new place to live that was close by and had room for us. We helped him move from Grace Town to Cowaramup. This is slightly further from the surf but not much and the new house is really nice not to mention in a place called Cow Town, awesome.

The Crew of the Antipodean

Recouperating at Ron's

Together again

Rockingham